Sterling firefighter leads effort to support former New York colleagues hit by storm

Area firefighters spent a day in Long Beach, N.Y., helping work on firehouses and private homes devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
Submitted photo STERLING – The devastation Hurricane Sandy unleashed on Long Beach, N.Y., hit home for full-time Sterling firefighter Jamieson Shea.

Shea was once a volunteer firefighter in that seaside city in Nassau County, New York. When Shea learned the city was hard-hit by the megastorm, he decided to reach out to help his friends there.

He organized and led a group of 32 firefighters from Ayer, Boxborough, Fitchburg, Leominster, Lunenburg, Princeton, Sterling and Wrentham, along with one paramedic, and one civilian, for a day trip on Sunday, Nov. 18, to aid Hurricane Sandy victims.

“The trip went about as smoothly as it could,” Shea said. “We did about a week’s worth of preparation before we left the area, so we were able to hit the ground running as soon as we arrived.”

The group’s main focus was to work on a number of fire stations in Long Beach, as well as the actual homes of the firefighters, that were destroyed during the devastating super storm.

“In the few conversations that I’ve had with the guys from my engine company in Long Beach, it sounds like they have completely lost everything,” Shea said of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in that area. “These guys are my first real fire service ‘family.’ They needed help, and I had the resources to put something together. I know that any one of them would do the same for me.

“We’re willing to do whatever these guys need help with,” Shea continued. “We were just happy to be there to give them an extra set of hands and a feeling that we’ve got their back.”

Demolition work turned out to be their main focus, starting with Long Beach Fire Department Station 1, the station that Shea worked out of while he was on the department. The group was able to tear out all of the walls and prepare the building for repair; the high water mark was at about four-feet on the apparatus floor.

When 14 members of the crew started opening walls, they found sea water and mud pouring from inside, Shea recalls. While those members worked on the station, another 14 were divided into two groups of seven. They were dispatched to several firefighters’ homes to do similar work, ripping up floors and tearing out walls.

“I’m still amazed at how much we accomplished as a group,” said Shea. “We met all of our goals and even added a few tasks that were originally not assigned to us. The amount of black mold that had already grown was incredible. Our crews did a great job in salvaging what was left of these homes.”

The crews completely stripped seven homes, including the house of the Long Beach Fire Chief, and one firehouse. They worked for about ten hours.

Shea’s former Long Beach fire department operated five engines, two tower ladders, a heavy rescue truck and three ambulances prior to the storm.

“After Sandy rolled through, the city was left with one functional engine,” said Shea. “Engine 41, which was the company that I was assigned to, was the only piece to make it out unscathed.”

Shea said the LBFD is “getting by now” with an engine loaned from Louisiana. This engine was originally purchased for the New York City Fire Department after 9/11 and later returned to New Orleans after Katrina. “The Spirit of Louisiana” arrived in Long Beach via flatbed truck a few weeks ago and is now serving as LBFD Engine 43, staffed by the city’s full-time firefighters.

“The rest of the city is being covered by departments from as far as 4 hours away, [with firefighters] working a 72-hour tour before returning to their respective towns,” said Shea.

“I don’t think people realize that there is a whole corridor going down Long Island and into New Jersey that was literally decimated by the storm,” fellow Sterling firefighter Tom Kokernak said. “Long Beach, for example, had all their fire stations destroyed, all of their fire apparatus destroyed, and most of the city remains uninhabitable.”

Shea said the city was in “very bad shape,” with some streets still completely blocked by debris and hundreds of abandoned cars strewn everywhere, covered with sand and seaweed.

“An entire city block burned during the storm as well,” Shea said. “The sight of that was unreal. You could see the high water mark all over town on City Hall, churches, homes, the hospital, everything. The city just didn’t stand a chance.”

Shea was inspired to organize the large group trip to Long Beach and affected areas, and said it wasn’t difficult to sign up fellow firefighters to volunteer for the service mission.

“Once the decision was made to work on this, the idea just kind of snowballed,” he said. “The fire service is a pretty tightknit community, so word spread really quickly.”

Not only were the firefighters ready and willing to work, many of them brought their own tools and supplies donated from their communities.

Local businesses also stepped in. Shea said they received equipment donations from Lowe’s Home Improvement and Aubuchon Hardware, and the group received financial contributions for fuel and tolls from all over the world, including a group of Army Special Forces soldiers who are stationed in Okinawa, Japan.

Some members of the Sterling Fire Department donated N95 masks as well as various firefighting hand tools for the crews to use during the trip while other firefighters donated their own tools to use for demolition.

An anonymous donor provided a 55-passenger motor coach that got the group to and from Long Beach, and the Fitchburg Fire Department sent their firefighter transport bus to carry tools and supplies.

“Fitchburg’s bus was instrumental in getting all four of our crews from point A to point B once we were in the city,” Shea said. “It really [was] incredible to see so many people coming together for a city that they’ve probably never been to and for people that they’ve certainly never met.”

Shea said that they were back to their original meeting place in Leominster by 11 p.m. that evening. Less than a half hour later, nine of the firefighters who volunteered in the relief effort were operating at a three-alarm alarm fire in Lunenburg. Most were on scene until 4 a.m.

Originally from Fitchburg, Shea lived in New York City and Long Beach for several years while working in the music industry. He grew up around the fire service, and so becoming a volunteer firefighter in Long Beach seemed a natural path for him.

“It’s always been a part of me,” he said.

After volunteering in Long Beach for two years, Shea said he “really fell in love” with firefighting and decided to move back to Massachusetts and make a career out of it. Before long he applied for a part time call firefighter/EMT position; Nov. 29 marks the one year anniversary of him being full-time at the Sterling Fire Department, a job he is “grateful for every day.”

“If we can give any of these families a day off from trying to pick up the pieces, I think we’ve achieved our goal,” Shea said. “As with any tragedy of this magnitude, it’s extremely important to let victims know that they’re not alone.”

For more information visit the Hurricane Sandy Relief Effort page on Facebook.